Traditionally, a distance between network devices has been represented by a hop count (i.e. a number of hops) on a network between the network devices. The hop count has generally indicated a number of transitions on a network that must be made when communicating between the network devices. Unfortunately, traditional techniques for determining a hop count on a network between network devices have exhibited various limitations.
Just by way of example, hops have conventionally been determined by sending network ping messages from a source device to a destination device, where each message has a sequentially increasing hop count threshold, until a network echo response is received by the source device from the destination device. However, such a technique is conventionally time consuming and generates a significant amount of network traffic. Specifically, a number of hops on a network between network devices has been determined via traceroute and/or netmask operations. The traceroute operations have required a linear sequential search and have generated a significant amount of network traffic, whereas the netmask operations have generally provided inaccurate determinations of hop counts while also causing substantial bandwidth usage.
There is thus a need for addressing these and/or other issues associated with the prior art.